Don't be a lazy linker cut and paster!
Seeking solutions
February 11, 2008
The shooting death last week of a New York state man during an alleged drug deal has shaken Rutland, either because of the frequency of violent deaths in the county in the past year, or the location — less than a block from the middle school — or some combination of factors.
Part of the reaction probably comes from a feeling by many that we're being invaded by outside forces. This is only half true: The drugs for the most part come from outside Vermont, as do some of the dealers. But without demand from local users, those dealers would go elsewhere.
The cocaine trade is laissez-faire capitalism in its rawest form.
Officer Tim Tuttle of the city police noted recently that the out-of-town dealers usually have a local sponsor, who might provide housing, a place to deal out of the public eye and/or connections to local users, in return for access to the drugs or money. And there's a lot of money at stake. Tuttle said that one dealer, after his arrest, reported earning $30,000 per week. With that kind of money, those folks who hope to somehow shut the trade down by manning the barricades at the Amtrak and bus depots need to think again. Successful drug dealers can clearly afford car payments, and according to police, most of the merchandise is coming up from either Massachusetts or New York on the highways, resulting in the occasional busts of major shipments on the interstates.
The police are under the pressure to be expected when violent crime is on the rise. Specifically, their methodical approach is designed to procure successful court convictions: A tip might lead to surveillance, planting an informant and then a raid and arrests. But a lot of residents would rather see the police raiding suspected drug houses as soon as they have enough probable cause to get a warrant from a judge. It's a higher-profile tactic, which means it is likely to be popular, but it's not clear if it would just make the criminals more mobile and so even harder to catch. It might also chase dealers into surrounding small towns with even less police presence, without reducing the underlying drug trade. Turning the city's drug traffickers into Mendon's, Brandon's and Wallingford's drug traffickers doesn't seem like much of a solution.
Predictably, the police want more money for staffing and overtime. Just as predictably, many taxpayers would be happier about that if they saw fewer officers working overtime sitting in their cars at construction sites. A rethink of priorities is in order along with the request for extra cash.
A renewed effort by federal prosecutors, which they have promised to provide, would certainly help, particularly against the bigger dealers.
Also promising are proposals to reinvigorate the Rutland United Neighborhood citizens' groups. Neighborhood watch programs are effective at identifying and shutting down houses being used for drugs.
Urban geography is another piece of the puzzle, from zoning through the role of the city's slumlords. For the most part, drugs are prevalent in neighborhoods where there are high concentrations of low-rent, multifamily apartments. In bigger cities, eliminating these kinds of substandard housing conditions has helped address the social conditions that breed drug dealers, to the point that many cities have started demolishing their tenements. Pride of place empowers the kind of citizen activism that increases reporting to police and forces drug dealers back underground, it seems.
And finally, Vermont needs to consider its gun laws. A recent report by the Brady Foundation recently gave the state among the worst marks of any jurisdiction in the country. Sensible controls on things like restricting sales by unlicensed dealers at gun shows don't do anything to affect the Second Amendment rights of legitimate gun owners.
It's time Vermont's hunting community woke up to the fact that semiautomatic pistols in the hands of drug dealers have nothing to do with a well regulated militia and a great deal to do with nighttime shootings on our streets
